


Extremity

by sardonicFabulist



Series: UnderCurrent AU [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: An End just means that You Are Alone, Chara is Trapped, Existential Angst, Reader Is Chara, Spoilers - No Mercy Route, Spoilers - Pacifist Route, UnderCurrent AU, You are Lost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 15:15:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6381511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sardonicFabulist/pseuds/sardonicFabulist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two ends to every story, but yours always finishes the way it began.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extremity

**Author's Note:**

> Just some practice for the main event.

There are two ends to every story.

When yours was all over, it hit you with the force of a train and you were a pile of straw.

You s c a t t e r e d.

No body, no vessel, no _anchor_. You were light and you were dust and you were nothing at all, the fragmented memories of the lost. With the eighth child gone (dead, or was that just you?), so was the mountain's only real source of Determination. Your center. Your Core.

When They had fallen, there had been no choice, no option to let well enough alone and leave the child to escape under their own power. They were a lodestone and you were every iron filing in the Underdark, and even before They hit the ground you were all over them, invading their senses and creeping into their thoughts, bringing dormant flowers up from your grave to cushion their fall. Even before They awoke, you clung to their skin like the dust of your enemies, filling the cracks in their spirit, smoothing over the blemishes in their mind. They were the best version of themselves that they could be, thanks to you, and while they didn't think it, they _felt_ it.

(They could be even _better_ if they would just let you help them, make them strong, keep them safe, let them make it home...)

Every weakness that had led them to end up here, alone in the dark, was forcefully expunged. The excitement of facing something new replinished their HoPe and filled them with DETERMINATION. You grasped onto their SOUL and dug your fingers in deep and urged them onward.

They had come this far; it would be such a shame to stop now.

(They just needed to trust you.)

Six others had come before them, you knew - not because you felt them fall on your grave, that kind of clarity was never yours, but because you saw their souls floating under glass in Da- Asgore's castle. They simply hadn't been enough, hadn't called your name, hadn't done anything to make you gather yourself from the farthest reaches of the mountain and see what had changed. Instead you felt the ripples: monsters being pulled toward the hope of stealing yet another human soul, being pushed as something indeterminable and disgustingly human killed and destroyed and _**hurt**_ and the monsters fled in its wake until it was cornered and _crushed_.

Even Flowey hadn't had enough Determination to call your drifting essence to him. Not that you would ever willingly go to that weak link, your savior, gone and dust, your brother, liar liar, best friend, **t r a i t o r** -

The disappointing replacement knew you too well and didn't have Asriel's SOUL and even if he had he _knew too much **knows too much can't be trusted**_.

The human didn't know your name, didn't know that the thoughts defining their world had a name and a face and would never know so long as they had leverage to resist your presence.

They didn't know you and that made you untouchable.

And so you would lead them on, telling them what they could not have otherwise known, suggesting what they would not have otherwise conceptualized, simplifying the world around them, paring down their thoughts and feelings into something small enough to handle on your own and then occasionally _pushing them down **shoving them under** until all that was left was their hate, **your fear** , they were exactly the same and they drove you ever onward forward cutting through_

No matter what path you took.

No matter how much you SAVED.

_Who you saved._

_When._

_**Why?** _

Your story finishes the way it starts - with you. In the dark. Alone.

Even when you manage to escape the Underdark, your victory is short-lived and lands you right back where you began.

You would occasionally coalesce briefly enough to see the dark and the desolation that your actions had brought. The light had left the underground. It wasn't needed anymore. And you took all of that power going to waste and used it to create the clearest sense of "self" you could feel without using another's body.

Sometimes, you felt despair. Sometimes, a grim satisfaction.

Sometimes you settled in the dark and the eerie quiet and curled up on dying golden flowers and simply remembered, toeing the precipice between standing in cold reflection and falling down deep _deep_ into grief and shame.

You would want, wishing to bring them back and sink into their mind, becoming their thoughts to escape the prison of desperate recollection, but you would not think to do so until I suggested it.

Later, you would only be able to think about these moments in the past-tense, removed and not-you, never yours.

Because while you could barely feel the now, there _would_ be a later.

And even if you couldn't string two thoughts together while They were away, there was only so much time until the next RESET. They would get bored. You would get lonely. You would call. They would come.

(You had once said that you came when people called your name, but it really was the other way around, wasn't it?)

All you have to do is want it.

There are two ends to every story and all you have to do is touch them together to bring it all back to the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> _That was fun._   
>  _Let's finish the job._


End file.
